Election Reform: The Real Activist—Film & Panel

By

Brent Turner, Juan Gilbert, Brian J. Fox, Carolyn Fowler

Saturday, 11:30 to 12:15

The Real Activist” is a documentary short film (20 minutes) that chronicles the civil rights actions of Brent Turner in his efforts for clean and secure election systems. Panel discussion will include a vibrant discussion about the election reform community – best solutions to the crisis- and a Q & A

Brent Turner is a graduate of Lincoln Law School in San Francisco and has a degree granted by University of San Diego in international legal studies from Oxford, England. Mr. Turner is a community activist whose efforts have included volunteer work for the homeless, children’s health and education, civil rights and environmental issues. Mr. Turner was instrumental in the creation of the San Francisco County Voting Systems Task Force and has been a director of communications for Open Voting Consortium. Brent has been recognized as a ground breaking activist for sustainability, and dedicates himself to local, state and federal issues.

Juan Gilbert: Distinguished Associate Professor, Auburn University- Clemson University- University of Florida. Gilbert was awarded the first Presidential Endowed Chair at Clemson University on November 9, 2012. In 2014, Dr. Gilbert left Clemson University and joined the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Dept at the University of Florida where he serves as the Andrew Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and the Associate Chair of Research. Dr. Gilbert’s research expertise covers Usability, Interface Design, Advanced Learning Technologies, and Data Mining. He has published more than 50 articles, given more than 100 talks and obtained more than $2 million dollars in research funding in his seven years at Auburn. Dr. Gilbert was named one of the nation’s top African-American Scholars by Diverse Issues in Higher Education. In that same year, Dr. Gilbert received the American Society for Engineering Education Minorities in Engineering Award. Recently, Dr. Gilbert was named a national role model by Minority Access Inc. At Auburn University, Dr. Gilbert has been honored with the Auburn University Alumni Engineering Council Junior Faculty Research Award, the Auburn University ACM Outstanding Faculty Member, Auburn University Alumni Outstanding Minority Achievement Award and the Auburn University Outstanding Minority Service Award. In 2006, Dr. Gilbert was honored with a mural painting in New York City by City Year New York, a non-profit organization that unites a diverse group of 17 to 24 year-old young people for a year of full-time, rigorous community service, leadership development, and civic engagement. Dr. Gilbert has also been named the Pioneer of the Year by the National Society of Black Engineer

Brian J Fox is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, consultant, author, and free software advocate. He was the original author of the GNU Bash shell, which he announced as a beta in June 1989. He continued as the primary maintainer for bash until at least early 1993. In 1985 Fox worked with Richard Stallman at Stallman’s newly created Free Software Foundation. At the FSF, Fox authored GNU Bash, GNU Makeinfo, GNU Info, GNU Finger, and the readline and history libraries. He was also the maintainer of Emacs for a time, and made many contributions to the software that was created for the GNU Project between 1986 and 1994.

Carolyn Fowler is currently Managing Partner for Daltek Global Solutions, LLC and has provided consulting, training, meeting facilitation, focus groups, speaking and organizational development services to nonprofits, corporations and public sector entities. Carolyn credits her accomplishments to the exceptional learning received as a retired AT&T Executive. She served five years as the Chief Operating Officer for The Smiley Group, Inc., a communications corporation established in support of human rights and related empowerment issues. Her most recent project was a documentary focused on the urgency of now in educating young black males and she currently consults on special projects